The Four Color Media Monitor

Comic Book Club Live wrote a fawning review of Tom King's take on Wonder Woman, which resorts to an awful cliche, along with Diana doing something that's hardly new at all:

I’m going to get into those spoilers here, so fair warning. Yes, Steve Trevor, the love of Wonder Woman’s life is killed by The Sovereign, the King of America, who WW has been fighting since issue one of this volume. And yes, Trinity, the daughter of Wonder Woman, is born by the end of this issue. But the point of the comic, pointedly titled “What Is The Point Of Steve Trevor?” is to prove why the two characters mean so much to each other, and why characters like Steve Trevor are important to the DC Universe as a whole.

Sure, there’s a fair bit of trolling here, and at times it can seem like Tom King is writing this purposefully to poke the bear on internet message boards. And the eventual conclusion about Steve Trevor will likely be as hotly debated as some of the choices here (don’t worry, there are plenty of surprises in between those two major plot points). [...]

What’s most laudable though is the idea King plays with that grief, the loss of a loved one, is a universal feeling. This is not about knocking Wonder Woman down to a human level… For the past 13 issues, The Sovereign has been aiming to do that, and failing at every turn. Diana is not human, Steve Trevor is, and there’s still very much a contrast there. But even gods can rage and cry, and that’s what we see as Wonder Woman goes through every possible stage of grief in a mystical way that only a descendant of Greek Gods can.

The other laudable part of this? Despite having the same team on the book, and continuing a story that began over a year ago, this DC All In issue really does feel like a fresh start. It’s deeply tied to continuity, both in terms of the greater DC Universe and the Wonder Woman title. But it’s impressive how accessible it is, despite all that. The Sovereign story will continue, but at times this feels like a tour of the DCU post-Absolute Power. You get plenty of cameos and Easter eggs, and it’s setting up big things going forward.

Gee, this is just so somnambulent. As if WW and other deities were never depicted crying or written feeling miserable about anything before. The idea of Steve dying isn't new either; if memory serves, there was a similar story way back in 1968, and shortly after, Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekovsky, who may have originated that plot point, took WW in the direction of all but losing her powers and becoming a martial arts practicing secret agent in plainclothes until about 1973. Steve would eventually be resurrected, and that'll probably be the case here too, though if they intend to do something truly awful with Steve later, that's why one can validly wonder if he'd be better off in comics limbo till the closure of DC.

And IIRC, wasn't the Sovereign penned as a metaphor for right-wingers? So why must we care about a story that's a political allegory the reviewer doesn't even have the courage to acknowledge or address? I'm sorry, but all that aside, King has been writing these dreadful allusions to "emotion" far too often, and there's no point in financing a story that's bound to be yet another form of contempt for the fanbases, something the reviewer gallingly downplays, and doesn't have the courage to admit is wrong, and has long gone way too far. With that kind of disrespect from the writers and artists, there's no point giving this story an audience. The Amazon princess deserves far better.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, women of dc, Wonder Woman

Superhero Hype announced the 1980s Silverhawks cartoon, much like the Thundercats, is now being adapted to comicdom, by Dynamite Entertainment:

Wings of Silver. Nerves of Steel. The SilverHawks were never quite as popular as their feline counterparts, the ThunderCats. However, the Rankin/Bass animated series still built up a small but loyal following in the 1980s. Yet despite being produced by the same team, the two cosmic series never saw an official crossover. That may change, however, with the SilverHawks joining what Dynamite Entertainment has dubbed the ThunderVerse. [...]

SilverHawks a passion project for writer Ed Brisson

The decision to bring back SIlverHawks was not directly born of Dynamite Entertainment and their successful partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery. The publisher has found critical and commercial success with some licensed cartoon comics in 2024, including Space Ghost and Jonny Quest, but the push to bring back Silverhawks was due to one insistent fan: Predator writer Ed Brisson. [...]

Brisson promises that the new series will delve into the origins of the Silverhawks, which were never revealed in the original show. An “inventive procedural approach” will be used to explore incidents, events, and locations only hinted at by the cartoon. This will build to the larger story of Mon*Star and the looming cosmic mob war. This will presumably eventually extend to Third Earth and the ThunderCats, kicking off a long-awaited crossover.

Here, I have to take issue with "revealed" and I guess even "delve". What's there to reveal when these are fictional characters? It's only a matter of origins never having been officially written/created/developed for the original TV cartoon almost 4 decades ago. Go ahead and develop some for this new take if you must, but as I've made clear before, it's insulting to the intellect when these press sources and even writers make it sound like these are real people here, when they're only fictional characters.

I'm sure there's potential to producing more comics based on licensed merchandize, but let's remember that, if they're held to political correctness, they won't be worth the wait.

Labels: animation, history, indie publishers, licensed products, msm propaganda

The Straits Times announced a rapper from Hong Kong is adding himself to the list of musicians making comics:

Some 150 lucky fans got to meet Hong Kong rapper-singer Jackson Wang in the flesh at a book-signing session on Oct 13 for a comic book, which he had a hand in creating and has big plans for. [...]

The comic book, Under The Castle: The Birth Of Pumpkie, is credited to TWD.

It is meant to be the first in a series, titled Under The Castle, of eerie tales within a castle. The first title focuses on Pumpkie, a little pumpkin character. The 31-page work also introduces a playful ghost called Spookie and the friendship between the two could be explored in future titles.

For the next two years, TWD will focus on creating the official launch for a full comic series and animation series related to Under The Castle. It is also looking at creating kids’ clubs related to the brand.

Wang said: “Why do we know Mickey Mouse? The Simpsons? It is because that was what was introduced to us when we were kids. For the next generation, I hope they can watch this.”

A huge fan of anime and cartoons, he told The Straits Times that he has always wanted to create a comic book. He said: “I hope it will entertain you and your kids.”

There's only one problem: let's not forget Hong Kong, since the mid-1990s, was handed back to China by the British government. So who knows if this isn't a government-approved comic, with the commies determining whether it's approvable? After all, no chance anything remotely critical of China's commies would be cleared for publication on their soil.

Apart from that, I do wish the guy good luck selling this comic. But if there's something sad in all this affair, it's the realization China's communist regime limits what you can write there, et cetera.

Labels: animation, censorship issues, Europe and Asia, manga and anime

Wired did a report about DC making a deal with Global Comix to produce digital editions of their comics output:

Comics are due for a reboot and the old guard knows it. DC Entertainment, the elder statesman of the business, has been trying everything to get young eyes on its familiar characters, from Monday’s surprise announcement of DC Go! webcomics, to a recently-launched kids’ line, to a licensing deal with teen favorite Webtoon.

Today, the company announced a partnership with even more potential to reshape the medium: a distribution deal with GlobalComix, a digital platform that has raised millions in funding to optimize traditional comics to be read by scrolling vertically on a smartphone.

Starting today, fans will be able to read 400 DC, Vertigo, and Wildstorm books, including story arcs from Batman, The Joker, and Doom Patrol, on GlobalComix’s subscription-based app, with many free to sample. The comics will be in standard panel-and-page format, but given GlobalComix’s investment and strategy around verticalization, DC’s move suggests a clear trend. That’s because the deal follows yesterday’s unveiling of DC Go!, a new mobile-optimized initiative on its DC Universe Infinite (DCUI) digital service. It won’t roll out until November 20, but when it does, it’ll allow readers to flick through original Harley Quinn, Nightwing, and Raven series—as well as some archival material—in a style familiar to anyone using apps like TikTok or Instagram.

Gee, haven't they noticed there's been a million "reboots" in terms of continuity, and none of it worked? And again, interesting they keep pushing Harley Quinn on us in all directions. What is so special about her that isn't so special about Black Canary and Huntress? And what's so special about the Joker, lest we forget? Pushing even a veteran villain creation like the Clown Prince of Crime upon the audience at this point has long been reprehensible too, because again, there's been far too much emphasis on villainy, much like darkness, for too long a time. And again, they make a big deal out of Batman, but not Superman. The only "clear" trend here is marching through the darkness, most likely without even any comedy to alleviate the frustration.

Seems simple, obvious even, but it’s a shift the traditional comics industry has been slow to make. When comics first made the migration to digital formats, they largely resembled the same multipanel pages that comics readers had been looking at for years, optimized for the screens of iPads or other tablets. Vertically-scrolling comics, on the other hand, allow readers to follow the story top-to-bottom, like reading a feed on their smartphone. With all the other things now available on those screens—mobile games, social media—old-school publishers have to keep up.

That point was hammered home this summer when Webtoon, the South Korean mobile platform that has popularized vertically scrolling comics worldwide, went public in the US based on a valuation of $2.67 billion. DC’s plans, announced in the lead-up to New York Comic Con, which begins Thursday, indicate that the comics giant is ready to advance on a number of fronts.

“The legacy American comic publishers seem to have reached the limits of new customer acquisition through media,” says Milton Griepp, publisher of ICv2, the trade publication of the comics industry. If they want to grow, he adds, they’re going to have to embrace vertical scroll comics, “which are bringing in tens of millions of new, mostly younger readers worldwide.” (Disclosure: This writer has written for ICv2.)

The legacy publishing has long reached the limits of what it can accomplish through artistic value. So why does he think this is going to do much to change any negative perception they've acquired since the early 2000s, when DiDio/Quesada brought down DC/Marvel's artistic cohesion, to say nothing of continuity? Sorry, but this farce of digital marketing is coming far too late. If there's any front DC's not advancing on, it's mending their continuity, respect of legacy characters who were marginalized and humiliated, and moving away from the kind of woke politics they've been shoehorning into their output over the past decade. Marvel's tried this digital approach in the past, and it hasn't led much of anywhere, mainly because the artistic quality was bad. Why should we be expected to care about DC taking a similar direction?

Labels: bad editors, Batman, dc comics, Europe and Asia, golden calf of villainy, indie publishers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, sales, technology

The comics writer Deniz Camp, who's of mostly Turkish background, and is now conceiving a non-binary take on Hawkeye, posted the following offense shortly after Israel's military eliminated the Hamas overlord who was one of the plotters of the October 7, 2023 bloodbath in Israel:

This is what I look like today pic.twitter.com/SQ4djnqsXr

— Deniz Camp (@DenizCamp) October 17, 2024

He is siding with the enemies of Stan Lee, who would've gladly murdered him too if he'd been at the dance festival that horrible day. What brings Marvel to hire Camp, and, are they going to continue employing this awful man after what he's doing now? If memory serves, despite their dismissal of Ardian Syaf a number of years ago, they may still be employing Saladin Ahmed, and even G. Willow Wilson may still be welcome in their vicinity. Additionally ironic is how pro-LGBT sources continue to ignore Islam's hostility to the ideology, and support movements worshiping the Religion of Peace regardless. Nor do they respect that 8 in 10 Americans side with Israel against Hamas. Yet another reason why Marvel/DC cannot be given backing anymore, based on their employment choices.

Labels: golden calf of death, golden calf of LGBT, golden calf of villainy, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism

Publishing Perspectives wrote about Italy's growing industry for comicdom:

Ivano Bariani sees the pandemic experience as having provided a serious inflection point in the progress of comics in Italy’s market. And while there has been much talk about brisk sales in recent years on the Italian market in comics, Bariani maintains that illustrated literature “has always struggled to gain the industrial and literary recognition it deserves, something familiar from other parts of the world, too.”

Bariani’s PromoComix is an agenzia di promozione, a marketing agency for publishers, and his company is specialized in comics, manga, and other graphic narratives. Formerly a bookseller, and one who had a small chain of stores at one point, he likes his role today in which, “We promote upcoming books, collect orders, work with buyers in every retail chain or independent bookstore. We also help publishers build a calendar and a strategy for their new releases.”

This also means that Bariani has a strong sense for the shape of the comics sector, using data, he says, from GfK, NielsenIQ, and from his clients to build his own picture of the very quick rise of comics and a sometimes confused view of where they are now.

“Until 2019,” he says, “the Italian comic book market was really behind its potential. In 2020-2021, with the pandemic, we saw an unnatural level of growth. Now, we’re on a plateau: huge numbers compared to just five years ago, and the quickness of high-intensity media phenomena, which can spike those numbers. I think the real challenge for retailers and publishers in this scenario, is not the dimension or growth of the market, but the speed of those phenomena.”

The kind of phenomena that Bariani is pointing to includes the prominance of the Tuscan-born artist Michele Rech, who works under the name Zerocalcare. His work in comics and graphic novels has led to a number of film successes, establishing a presence on Netflix. Bariani also points to the success of Pera Toons for children and of Lyon Gamer’s work, an outgrowth of social gaming.

Graphic novels, Bariani says, in the Italian market are “an underworld of undervalued authors” dominated by Zerocalcare. “But other sub-catetories of the comics market,” prior to the pandemic, “weren’t doing much better. In 2018, manga represented just over 1 percent of the market,” he says, “and that was only in terms of copies. In euros, it was around 0.5 percent. The leadership of a few popular artists and publishers seems central to the quickening movements of the sector in this decade. Jump to 2022, and comic book titles in Italy’s Top 100 included a Zerocalcare release ranked at No. 33, four Pera Toons works for kids, and two manga titles. And by 2024, Bariani says, he has seen a Zerocalcare release go to No. 8 and seven Pera Toons titles in the first eight months of this year. Bariani dates the frequently mentioned “explosion” of comics in Italy at 2021: “Comic book sales nearly reached 100 million,” he says, “with manga doubling the sales of graphic fiction, reaching almost 57 million. Eighty percent of the comics sold that year were manga. Considering sales of all books, one in every 11 books sold in Italy that year was manga.

I sure hope whatever's on Italy's own market today has stuff worth reading, because when Netflix comes up, that decidedly doesn't inspire confidence. For anything representing good taste, good luck to its creators in Italy. But anybody who believes Netflix is a great place more than anything else to air adaptations - or that adaptations is such a big deal compared to the source material - is kidding themselves. That's not a mindset comicdom can go by anymore.

Labels: animation, Europe and Asia, history, manga and anime, msm propaganda, sales, technology

The VT Digger gave a report about the comics collection of Christine Farrell, a late store manager who owned quite a collection of all sorts of comics dating back many decades. One that's now unfortunately being sold off to speculators:

What many visitors to Earth Prime Comics, one of Vermont’s first comic book stores, may not realize is that the shop’s late co-founder, Christine Farrell, wasn’t just another comic book fan. Farrell built one of the largest collections of DC Comics — the home of “the world’s greatest superheroes,” such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern — in existence, becoming a quiet legend in the world of comic art.

Farrell died in April, leaving behind a trove of treasures and memories for those in the comics industry, as reported by Seven Days.

In her Burlington home, comic books filled every corner, packed in boxes, wrapped in mylar sleeves or stacked high in piles. Farrell had tens of thousands of books, among them every DC Comics ever published, starting with 1935’s “New Fun Comics” No. 1. While some of her collection has already hit the market, the full DC Comics collection is set to be auctioned off later this month, with sales continuing in the months to come.

“It’s definitely unique. Only one other person in history had a complete collection,” said Lon Allen, vice president and comic art expert of Heritage Auctions based in Texas, the auction house handling the sale of Farrell’s comics. Another auction house has been selling the other full collection for the past few years, but those copies were of much lower quality, according to Allen.

“She went out of her way to buy higher grade copies,” Allen said, explaining that books are inspected for factors such as the condition of the cover, spine, pages and corners. The book is then given a grade, usually on a scale of 0.5 to 10, with 10 representing a perfect condition.

I certainly think it's amazing she owned only so many old back issues that're now close to a century old, but what we have here is again a situation where classic content is being commoditized on the auction circuit, instead of being donated to museums. And on that note:

“They were discussing what era some of the comics were from. ‘Is this 80s Marvel? Is this DC from the 60s?” Van Dyke said. “So it was very cool to have them be like, ‘Hey, check this out!’”

Although some Vermont comic artists are disappointed that Farrell’s collection will be dispersed instead of preserved in a museum for people to read, Van Dyke said everything is happening in accordance with her will.

“This is the course of action that she set up, that the estate was essentially gonna be liquidated,” Van Dyke said.

See, this is what's regrettable about the situation here. She may not have bought the classic issues so they could be added to museum projects, but rather, for speculators to have a field day with. How is that helping, when these back issues are bound to vanish into vaults in the basement? Why can't the issues retain visibility? Surprisingly enough, however:

Farrell did not own a single graded or certified book, Allen said, suggesting she read the comics she collected. When a book is certified or “slabbed,” it refers to the process of encasing it in a hard, tamper-proof plastic case to protect it from further wear or damage.

The formal certification and slabbing of comic books started in 2000 with the creation of the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), which is also grading Farrell’s comics collection for Heritage Auctions. It is an expensive process that comes out of the pocket of the person selling the comic.

“It makes me happy to hear that Chris’ collection is not in that state of existence,” Bissette said. “But it will also diminish the market value, in that people will bid on those comics and they will bid on them hoping on getting a copy of a given comic in good enough condition so they can slab and resell it at a higher price, so this is gonna be a highly speculative-driven auction process.”

Greg Gordiano, a Burlington comic artist and illustrator, describes the certification of comic books as a profit-driven scheme that has cast a cynical shadow over the entire collecting industry.

“Slabbing is so non-empathetic towards enjoying the books because once it’s in that plastic case, you can’t enjoy it,” said Gordiano. “You can’t even look at it. Zero pleasure.”

For Rick Veitch, a comics artist and writer mostly known for his work for DC’s “Swamp Thing,” the comics industry has become a collector’s market rather than a reader’s market.

“As an author of comics, I want readers, not hoarders,” he said.

Well I'm glad some sense is being brought in here, and pretty surprising to learn Mrs. Farrell may have actually read a lot of her collection. But that's why more needs to be done to voice objections to anybody doing business with profiteers, and encourage more business be done with museums and other archives instead.

But there’s hope. At the Center for Cartoon Studies in Hartford, an institution focusing on comics and graphic novels, young cartoonists are setting up small marketplaces where they are outside of the collectors’ market.

“They’re highly creative and following their individual visions and creating these sometimes handcrafted comics,” Veitch said. “You go to one of the marketplaces and the customers coming in aren’t comic nerds, they’re just regular civilians off the street who’re looking for something interesting and beautiful to read.”

But are the above cartoonists making use of the paperback/hardcover format? That's how you really get the message across these days convincingly, and it's regrettable there's still a considerable number of artists and writers out there who vehemently refuse to make the shift to the book market with products consisting of higher page counts than the 20-30 pages a pamphlet could contain, to say nothing of advertisements. If today's graphic novelists do make use of paperback, that's a step in the right direction. But the point must be made more widely, and there's only so many specialty news sites who won't make the case for paperbacking and hardcovering for comicdom, and seem very disinterested in actually doing so.

For now, those who care about the medium need to make it clear that auctioneering is only hurting the industry and making it a joke, and actually preventing the art form from maintaining visibility, if "collector's items" only get stored away in vaults. And future generations of specialty store owners should consider trying to make a serious shift to just selling paperback/hardcover products, if they really want to prove they're serious about promoting the art form for reading, for all ages.

Labels: dc comics, exhibitions, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, museums, sales

Superhero Hype announced Marvel's doing a number of single-issue tales, some of which are penned by none other than the insufferably overrated Straczynski. For example:

The team-up is one of the oldest traditions of superhero comics. An uncountable number of stories are based around heroes and villains joining forces against a common enemy. The most memorable of these stories involve unlikely, if not unthinkable team-ups. To that end, a series of one-shots by writer J. Michael Straczynski will tell tales of Marvel Comics‘ most unlikely duos, starting with Doctor Doom and Rocket Raccoon.

Fun was the watchword for Straczynski in crafting this particular collection of comics. “I like to go where the fun is, and the idea of putting together Marvel characters who had either never been paired before, or only minimally, seemed like it would be a ton of fun.”

What's so "fun" about Straczynski's writing? It goes without saying that a writer who forced some of the earliest of bad metaphors for real life leftist politics into comicdom post-2000 cannot be trusted to deliver a tasteful story teaming an anthropomorphic galactic raccoon with a nasty autocratic tyrant from a fictional Balkan country, one who's been written with a disturbingly high count of murdering people, and if the most recent examples in particular are canonized, that's exactly what makes this pointless exercise in futility repellent. Let's also not forget Straczynski was the writer who depicted Doom sobbing under his armor mask over 2 decades ago at the site of World Trade Center's destruction in the pages of Spider-Man.

The stories will be set at various points in Marvel continuity. Comparable stories include Jonathan Hickman and Sanford Greene’s Doom and Chip Zdarsky and Daniel Acuña’s Avengers: Twilight. This will offer both new fans and established readers a chance to enjoy these one-shots.

“The more unlikely the pairing, the more eccentric the combo, the more fun it was to see it come to life,” proclaims Straczynski. “For the first time we could see the original Nick Fury in China along with the Flying Tigers taking on a newly awakened Fin Fang Foom. See the Ghost Rider slugging it out with none other than Galactus. Aunt May caught in the midst of a supernatural battle alongside Agatha Harkness.”

Hickman and Zdarsky are just as overrated as Straczynski, and with Marvel's better days far behind it now, what's to celebrate? These writers simply do not have what it takes to deliver the goods, and the modern editorial mandates and status quos make things worse. It's just no use.

Labels: Avengers, dreadful writers, Fantastic Four, golden calf of villainy, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man, women of marvel

Movieweb wrote about the box office failure of Joker: Folie a Deux, and they argue superhero films with female leads are held to higher standards. And they also reveal a certain director, most unfortunately, defended the sequel, and making matters worse, they pulled the woke card act on racial issues:

On October 6, the Sunday after Joker: Folie à Deux opened in theaters, the movie was looking at a terrible box office weekend and an even worse audience reaction. The Hollywood Reporter posted a story about how director Francis Ford Coppola liked the Joker sequel. The caption on The Hollywood Reporter's X account said, "Hang in there, Todd Phillips." Many called out The Hollywood Reporter for the framing of this story, particularly in response to how they covered the box office fallout to The Marvels in 2023, particularly with the headline "Why ‘Marvels’ Director Nia DaCosta Bailed on the Cast-and-Crew Screening." The article seemed to put all of the blame for The Marvels flopping on DaCosta and was accused of misrepresenting the situation. This certainly highlighted how white male directors are treated kinder than women of color.

Oh for heaven's sake. Do we really need to hear this nonsense again about how white men have it better, sans all discussion of artistic quality? There's tons of male directors who haven't fared well, and Steven Spielberg's recent remake of West Side Story was catastrophous. Must I also note how disappointed I am with Coppola for lending support to the Joker sequel? And here I thought he was among all those famous filmmakers put off by the overabundance of superhero fare! Supervillain fare is much worse though, and that goes without saying. If we're supposed to be rooting for criminals, that's awful.

Still, it also spoke to another case of how female-centric superhero movies are treated far more harshly than male-led ones. While The Marvels was a box office disappointment, it performed better on its opening weekend than Joker: Folie à Deux; headlines about The Marvels were much more doom-and-gloom. Everything was put on the shoulders of The Marvels, where Joker 2 was treated as a one-off. The release and fallout of Joker 2 highlights a sexist double standard in how people talk about female-led superhero movies, one that is sadly as old as the genre itself. Long story short, when a male-led superhero movie like Morbius, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, or Joker: Folie à Deux flops, is because of several factors. When female-led ones like The Marvels, Birds of Prey, or Madame Web flop, the blame is solely on whom the lead is.

Oh for heaven's sake. Since when weren't the male leads of various live action adaptations accountable for failure? Far as I'm concerned, a non-actor like Dwayne Johnson has some responsibility to shoulder for the Black Adam movie's failure, and the scriptwriters do too, based on all the wokeness they shoehorned in. Of course, if that's how they feel, why doesn't Movieweb's writers do a whole essay on how quite a few pretentious male performers are to blame for a superhero film's failure? And overrated as the Wonder Woman movies were, I don't recall anybody massively blaming Gal Gadot for the 2nd film's failure, awful as it was. On which note, Movieweb does get around to that film, in any event:

In 2017, after 76 years in comics, Wonder Woman finally got her solo feature film with Patty Jenkins's feature film, Wonder Woman. Despite being part of DC's Trinity alongside Superman and Batman, she had struggled to make it to the big screen. Superman and Batman had multiple films by the time Wonder Woman got her solo movie. Wonder Woman remained stuck in development hell even though lesser-known heroes from DC's pages, like Swamp Thing, Constantine, and Green Lantern, got the big screen treatment. Meanwhile, the MCU wouldn't have a female hero in a film title until their 20th film, Ant-Man and the Wasp, with the following movie, Captain Marvel, being the first female-led solo project in the franchise after 11 years.

For years, the poor box office and critical performance of female-led superhero movies like Supergirl, Catwoman, and Elektra were used to justify not greenlighting a Wonder Woman or Black Widow film. The common idea was those movies did poorly because audiences didn't like female-led superheroes, and not that the actual quality of the films was bad. Bad movies based around male-led superhero movies never stopped the genre or were blamed for their box office disappointment. Films like Batman & Robin, The Spirit, and Jonah Hex never risked other male-led superhero movies like The Flash and Green Lantern getting made.

This is how it goes, as male-led superhero movies aren't forced to carry the weight of the genre on their shoulders as their female-led counterparts are. Three Punisher movies were made and bombed before Wonder Woman got her solo film. Madame Web was bad, but it is not like Morbius is any better. Moreover, individuals on the internet tried to blame Madame Web for being bad because it was about a group of women, but the same reasoning isn't used for box office and critical disappointments like Joker 2, 2019's Hellboy, or The Flash.

Strange, wasn't the 1st adaptation of Swamp Thing back in 1982? What's that got to with all this? As for the Flash film, I don't think star Ezra Miller's going to find many more roles after what he was accused of, and is tragically getting away with. Something they don't correctly acknowledge here is that Jonah Hex, Spirit and Green Lantern, at their time, remained with just one entry, little different from any failed film starring superheroines. Plus, they forget Hex can't be considered a superhero in the same way as the modern day counterparts, since it's a western. Though as I recall, the film absurdly gave Hex the ability to briefly revive the dead just so he could interrogate them or something?!? Gee, as if things couldn't have been more badly handled.

Furthermore, to say Madame Web's a flop because it was about women is monumentally stupid, and throughly ignores any and all lady-led films and even TV shows that were successful. What about Charlie's Angels and even Charmed? They may be TV-based (the former did have a film adaptation in 2000), but don't they count? The reason was simply because the studio wasn't building on merit and talent. From what Movieweb's telling here, you'd think these were gay men blabbering the nonsense; why would a heterosexual man have an issue with a movie starring a girl, especially if she's hot? That's something Movieweb's propagandist doesn't answer. It just doesn't make any sense. After all, considering films starring women continue getting made all the time, doesn't that contradict their claim?

How much longer do these ideologues intend to keep pushing this silly clickbait cliche that nobody wants movies starring superheroines? None of this is helping, and again, throughly ignores the lack of talent and merit in today's Hollywood. Maybe the best question of all is, what's the use of making these movies at all, regardless of whether a man or woman is the star? It's all just a whole waste of billions of dollars on so much sound and fury that signifies nothing in the end.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, Flash, golden calf of villainy, Green Lantern, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, Punisher, Spider-Man, Supergirl, women of dc, women of marvel, Wonder Woman